


from me, the moon

by orphan_account



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Fluff, I guess it's an AU of sorts, I have spent to long trying to figure out how to tag this, Kinda Fluffy, M/M, Richie is a musician instead of a comedian and dreams about Eddie, Take it as you will folks, This is literally not canon at all, no one dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 00:18:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20733113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: They’re not nightmares in the scary and gore-filled sense, more in the sense that Richie wakes up in his cramped twin bed in his dorm room, sweating straight though his sweatpants and shirt, and his heart feels like it’s about to jump out of his mouth and land on the dirty clothes that tends to live in the middle of his dorm room.





	from me, the moon

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, I do not fucking know. Someone sent an anon to @ransonejames on tumblr and I ran with it. I have not slept so this might be all over the place.
> 
> This is also the first time I have tried to write Richie and Eddie so that is a mess all on its own, but I just felt like i needed to give it a shot so I hope I didn't mess it up too bad! 
> 
> If there are any grammar or spelling mistakes, please pretend you don't see them, I'll try to fix them when I'm not running on 3 hours of sleep! Hope this isn't a train wreck.

* * *

If it wasn’t such a cliche thing to say when stuff like this happens, Richie would say the dreams turn out to feel more like a never ending loop of nightmares more often than not.

They’re not nightmares in the scary and gore-filled sense, more in the sense that Richie wakes up in his cramped twin bed in his dorm room, sweating straight though his sweatpants and shirt, and his heart feels like it’s about to jump out of his mouth and land on the dirty clothes that tends to live in the middle of his dorm room.

The main problem with these dreams, Richie try’s to reason once he’s taken several deep breaths and goes to splash water on his face, isn’t that they’re particularly scary in any way, its just the the dreams are so frighteningly vivid that he doesn’t know what to do with them once he wakes up. They feel so real, as if he was actually living within those moments every time he closes his eyes to sleep, and actually being awake starts feeling like the dream instead.

Mostly, the dreams all have the same pattern to them. It’s always Summer time, and Richie only knows that because he swears he can feel the sweat making the shirt he’s wearing cling to his skin, can feel the sun beating down on his face, knows in some weird sense that he must have a splatter of freckles on the bridge of his nose. And he’s in the woods, or sometimes he’s in some sort of underground den, laying on a dingy hammock reading a comic book with other voices murmuring in the back of his mind. 

As much as Richie feels suffocated by these dreams, some of the best ones he has are ones where he’s in someone’s bedroom, laying on the too small bed. He knows that it isn’t his own because of how tidy and organized everhthing is. It smells clean, and would smell borderline sterile if it weren’t for an underlying smell that brings comfort to Richie, which shouldn’t be possible because he’s dreaming for _fucks sake_, and he also knows he’s never smelled that particular smell before.

It smells sweet and earthy and Richie can’t think of anything but, _Home_. 

So, sometimes he’s in different locations, places he doesn’t remember ever going to, but also feels like he knows like the back of his hand. And there’s always a boy there with him, sometimes there’s other people too. A boy with curly hair and a smirk always on his lips, a girl with fiery red hair that reminds Richie of a burning star, there’s a boy with auburn hair and Richie swears he hears a stutter come from the boys lips, there’s a boy who is gentle and walks like he’s surrounded by glass, but his smile makes Richie feel calm, and there’s a boy who is always reading, laughing at everything that the girl with fiery red hair says. 

Those people bring him comfort too which he doesn’t want to look into too much, but they come and go so much sometimes it all feels like a play to Richie instead of a dream.

But there’s one boy who is always there no matter where his dreams decide to take him. He’s shorter than Richie, and he’s always wearing the shortest shorts and a fanny pack wrapped around his waist that shouldn’t make Richie’s heart ache, but it does so much that Richie feels like someone’s reached into his chest and just _squeezed_.

The boy is pretty, beautiful even, Richie decided that the first time the boy appears to him in his dreams. Around the 5th time Richie ends up dreaming within these moments, realizing he can do as he pleases in them, he decides to be bold and reach out to touch the smaller boys hair, marveling in the way he could actually feel how soft it was, _fuck_, even smell the shampoo the boy uses. It smelled like lavender. Felt his heart leap into his throat when the boy blushed and cautiously leaned into the touch.

Richie swore he could smell lavender as he jolted awake that night.

Richie has not one fucking clue who this boy is, swears he has never seen him in his life because if he had, he’s sure he would have been married by now. 

As much as Richie has tried to convince himself that he doesn’t know this boy, has never seen him in Chicago, there’s something that turns harshly in his stomach when he tries to pin it as his imagination and brain telling him that he needs to get his dick wet, like yesterday. He knows it’s more than that, way more.

He knows this boy, and maybe if he actually doesn’t, his heart does. Which sounds gay as hell,whatever, Richie is a hopeless romantic, give him a fucking break alright? And he figures there’s a reason he’s dreaming about this boy, has been dreaming about him for the past three months. Fate and destiny and all that other bullshit that Richie loves to read about when he’s feeling homesick for a home he doesn’t know actually ever existed.

Richie starts to write songs about his dreams. He figures it’s a better outlet compared to smoking a bowl of weed anytime a dream gets particularly heavy in a way that makes Richie shake for a week straight, which happens way too fucking much.

One particularly bad night had Richie smoking a bowl and then taking a melatonin after he dreamed of the boy sitting across from him on the too small hammock, he was biting his lips raw and Richie had wanted nothing more than to lean over and kiss the smaller boy, kiss him until he woke up and didn’t feel like he was going to choke on the feeling of wanting to be touched and to touch.

Before Richie could even do anything too hasty, the boy was speaking, looking at Richie so intensely he felt like he was going to get burned with it.

_“Shut the fuck up Richie. You always have a family with us, with me. I love you. And so do the others, but I love you, you dumbass.” _

Richie wakes up crying and can’t look anyone in the eyes for two days straight after that one.

So, he writes. And he writes so many songs he feels like his hand is going to fall off.

The whole band thing starts before the whole dream thing, thankfully.

Richie goes into his freshman year of college ready to start over, restart on a life that feels hazy and unsteady. He thought about joining the astronomy club and the theater department is already having sign ups for their winter play and Richie thinks he could be a decent actor. He figures it’s also a way to get laid pretty easily. 

But then his roommate, Peter, corners him five weeks into the semester, as he steps back into their dorm from taking a shower, ready to hop into bed.

“Why didn’t you tell me you could sing you fuck?” Peter shoves Richie as soon as he walks into the room, which makes a surprised laugh bubble up in Richie’s chest, because up until that point Peter had been nothing but a nice, well-mannered guy from Bumfuck, Idaho, who thankfully, got Richie's sense of humor wonderfully. 

Richie liked Peter a lot because he had only known Richie for about two weeks and he hadn’t made fun of him, and even cuddled him a for a good hour, when he had cried while they watched _The Social Network_. 

“I don’t think you’re supposed be crying this hard Rich.” Peter had mumbled, awkwardly petting Richie’s hair, in a gesture that was clearly meant to be sympathetic.

“It’s clearly a love story Peter, what the shit are you not understanding! They want to fuck each other’s hearts!” Richie had wailed dramatically, snorting out a laugh when Peter had jokingly tried to shove him off his bed.

So, it was a no brainier that he immediately said, _Fuck Yes_, to forming a band with two other guys from Peter’s Econ class. 

It was only a beautiful recipe for disaster that Peter, Dan, JoonWoo, and Richie got on like a fucking house on fire from the get go. They spend midterms trying not to flunk out of college in one fail swoop, and also figure out who they want to be as a band. Things kind of just flow out of control from there.

Richie never expected anything from the band, if he’s being honest. It was a good distraction from the dreams that would make him feel cold down to the bone, and he liked feeling like he belonged to something. For a while it had felt like that was missing, like he was missing an entire family back home, and he had finally found something that could alleviate that ache that was threatening to spill over all the time. 

The dreams he had easily started to become an inspiration for songs. Richie would wake up from a particularly intense one, and instead of freaking himself out so bad he’d have to wake up Peter to help get his breathing back in control, Richie will lean over and grab his notebook from off the floor, and just start writing about everything he saw in his dreams and hopes it’ll make sense somewhere along the line. 

They start playing random gigs at bars and coffee shops, and on some rare occurrences, frat parties, and people fucking eat it up. Before they know it, their songs are getting played on radio stations in Chicago, and they realize they’re doing something big when JoonWoo’s mom sends him a video of a radio station in California playing their fucking songs.

Richie’s _fucking_ song about a boy he sees in his dreams is playing on a radio station in Palo Alto. Richie almost vomits. 

He eventually tells the other boys about his dreams, and about how he’s sure he’s probably insane for being in love with a boy he doesn’t even know exists, but that’s just life, baby! He tries not to get too annoyed when they all give him different variations of sad smiles, ignores JoonWoo and Dan completely when they remind him that he can talk to them anytime. 

They don’t let it go. Richie loves them for caring, but he _really fucking_ wishes they would let it go. 

“Dude, not that the songs aren’t absolutely killer, but maybe you should think about seeing someone...” Dan days, scuffing the toe of his shoe on the ratty dorm carpet.

“Seeing someone for _what_?” Richie says without looking up from his French paper, although he already knows what they mean by the looks the three boys had given him once he handed over the lyrics of the new song he had written.

“Come on Rich, it’s great that you’re getting inspiration out of these....dreams. But may-“ Richie whips around in his chair, glaring, and stops Peter before he can go any further.

“What the fuck? So you guys think I’m crazy now? You didn’t think _I_ was crazy when the song that _I_ wrote got us on the fucking radio.” And okay, Richie knows he’s being too harsh on them, but he can’t think about anything too hard or he feels like his ribs are going to crack open and everything he’s been trying to hold together since the dreams started, is going to spill out of him and, _he can’t_.

“We’re just worried about you. We know you’re being and asshole right now because you’re scared. All were saying is maybe you just need to talk to someone, and the dreams will go away.” Peter says while hesitantly ruffling Richie’s hair. 

The problem that Richie is having at the moment is that it’s been four months since the dreams started and he’s at a point where he’s more afraid of what happens if the dreams suddenly stop. Richie doesn’t think he would be able to handle that. He doesn’t want them to stop. Can’t imagine moving on from this dumb boy who appeared in him dreams one day and has stuck around. 

He still wakes up with fear tugging at his heart and a dull, aching thud pounding away in his brain. And sometimes the dreams make him yearn so much that it makes him physically ill, but he needs them. He needs the boy that he doesn’t need know like he needs to fucking _breathe_. He feels as though he would gladly let the dreams swallow him whole and never let him out. 

Richie sighs and stands up from his desk chair, avoiding eye contact with any of the boys by dramatically stretching his worn out limbs. Trying to control his breathing when he briefly closes his eyes and the image of freckles and rosy pink cheeks flash behind his eyelids. 

“They’re just dreams guys. It’s like I’m having wet dreams every night, except these are, you know, more romantic?,” Richie huffs out a laugh when three pair of eyes look at him wearily, “Shut up, don’t you guys have places to be? Girlfriends to be sexing?”

Dan groans loudly, causing the others to laugh.

“Dude shut the fuck up. What did we talk about?” Dan says shoving Richie back down into his desk chair.

“I think sexing is a very respectable terms my young chaps. Not my fault you grandpas can’t keep up with the lingo of the youth.” Richie leans back into his chair, smirk covering his face, and try’s to pretend he doesn’t feel like he’s on the verge of having some sort of cathartic panic attack that’s going to end in him sleeping for 14 hours straight. 

Maybe he’s sleeping too much lately.

——————————————————

If anyone were to ask Eddie, he would say he wasn’t exactly _pretentious_ about his music taste in the slightest. He likes what he likes and he doesn’t really care if it wasn’t what everyone else was listening to. Anything was good to Eddie as long as it made him feel something. 

With that being said, Eddie’s friends were absolutely, astonishingly, and incomprehensibly _annoying_ about this new band that had just broke into the mainstream scene. He had no choice but to turn a deaf ear, really. 

“Eddie, I just think you’re being very small brained by purposely not listening to them.” His friend Maria had said for about the 80th time within a three day time period and it was only grating on his nerves about a _fuckton_.

“Maria, my sweet, and beautifully infuriating friend, it’s just another band. Why is this band so different from the other bands that you forced me to listen to that I eventually ended up despising?” Eddie says, watching as Maria scrolls through her playlist, he assumes she’s trying to find a song to show him that he’ll like.

“You’ve heard them before you asshole! At that art club party, I saw you nodding your head along to it.” Maria suddenly let’s out small huff of contentment and promptly hands Eddie one of her earbuds. 

Eddie sighs and restrains himself from rolling his eyes too hard, the last time he did that he ended up having a headache for about two hours.

“Just listen, don’t say anything.” Maria says as she closes her eyes, which Eddie thinks is an absolute overkill considering they’re walking in four inches of snow and there is bound to be ice somewhere for her to slip on if she isn’t paying attention, but he doesn’t say anything. He lets her press play and makes sure he’s steering her in the right direction by her elbow. 

And Yes, Eddie sometimes is an antagonizing asshole on purpose, but then the song starts and he vaguely remembers the beat, and it’s not awful, so he keeps his snarky comments to himself and lets himself actually listen to the song.

The first thing Eddie registers is how soft the song actually is. If he were to picture a band made up of a bunch of college-aged boys, he would think loud, brash, and mildly dirty, but this, is not that at all.

Even with only one earbud in, Eddie can feel the thrum of the bass in his chest, the instruments don’t intrude on the melancholy feel of the song like he would think they would. Instead they help create this mellow bubble as a sweet, velvety voice begins to serenade him with memories of Summer and about wanting to be young again, and most of all, about being in love with your best friend.

Eddie peaks at Maria and sees that she still has her eyes closed, a siren smile on her face, as if the song is taking her back to a happy moment in her life right in the middle of a Boston blizzard.

And Eddie finds himself understanding that sentiment.

The rich voice continues to paint a vivid picture for Eddie. 

He sings ever so affectionately about a boy, which makes Eddie blush for some stupid reason that he won’t look into too much. There is an inane softness to the way the singer describes rosy pink lips and a sunburned freckled face, and something about God spending extra time on him and the spots he’d love to kiss one by one, which makes Eddie’s throat click. 

Eddie doesn’t notice that he’s gripping onto Maria’s elbow pretty tightly until she yelps and manages to dislodge both their earbuds, the gentle flow of the singer describing a summer memory spent at a quarry, ripped right out of his ear.

“Whoa Eds, are you alright? You don’t look to good.” Maria slows down, reaching out to put the back of her hand against his forehead, Eddie feels his stomach lurch, and he quickly reaches out to grip Maria’s wrist before she can touch him.

“What did you just call me?” Eddie gasps out, he tries hard to ignore the concerned look Maria is giving him, because Eddie feels like he’s about to have an asthma attack but that isn’t possible because he’s never even had asthma, well like, not for real anyways. 

“Eddie, Jesus Christ what is going on with you? Why are you going all weird on me over calling you Eds? It’s not like it’s the first time.” Maria places her hand over his where’s they’re gripping onto her wrist, and squeezes in a way that Eddie thinks is supposed to feel comforting, and it would have been, if he didn’t feel like he just got hit by a 16-wheeler going eighty miles an hour.

And Eddie can still hear the song playing through the earbuds that are hanging uselessly by Maria’s side. It’a very quiet and vague, and Eddie can barely piece together the tune, but he hears the word _lover_ come clearly through the earbuds, and all at once he gets hit with a detailed memory of a boy with too big glasses and warm, fiery eyes underneath, a sharp, sweet smile being directed right at him.

_“I gotta find a way to keep you all to myself Eds. I don’t feel like fighting every girl in Derry over you. You’re just so fucking cute. Cute cute cute Eds!”_

“Earth to Eddie? Anyone in there?” Maria waves a hand in front of his face, Eddie feels like he’s burning from the inside out suddenly. He wishes he still had his inhaler even if he didn’t actually ever need the stupid fucking thing, because right now, he feels like he actually might need it. 

“Yeah, sorry. I think i’m getting sick. This stupid fucking weather,” Eddie takes a steadying breath and ignores Maria’s questioning eyes, “The song was only vaguely alright. I would put it on in the background while i’m studying or something.”

Eddie mumbles and avoids looking directly at her, he’s trying his best not to have a full blown freak out, but by the way Maria is sighing he knows he’s not convincing anyone.

“You’re so full of shit Eds. But that’s fine, I won’t rag on you too much when you tell me you’re obsessed with them within the next few weeks.” Maria says gently, ruffling his beanie covered head.

Eddie fights the overwhelming and confusing urge to snap out a, '_Don’t call me Eds.'_ and also the most out of the blue urge to vomit up his lunch all over the snow covered quad. 

So, Eddie lets Maria keep talking as they walk back to the dorms, something about the cute girl in her creative writing class, and pretends like his heart isn’t about to beat right out of his chest.

—————-

The most baffling and down right infuriating thing is that Eddie _keeps_ fucking crying while listening to these songs.

The main problem Eddie finds is that he doesn’t even like the type of music the band, _Till Moon_, puts out and yet he can’t stop fucking crying at every song that comes on shuffle, and it’s getting kind of ridiculous.

Eddie, true to his word, picks a random album and plays it in the background as he’s trying to finish his six page paper on romantic British lit. He’s two sentences in when he realizes that he hasn’t been paying attention to his paper at all and that there are somehow salty tears running down his cheeks and into his mouth.

Eddie is close to hyperventilating as the song reaches the bridge, laptop completely thrown aside and he stares desperately at his speaker as though it will give him answers as to why the voice of the singer _(His names Richie, Eddie learned from a very quick google search he did one night when his brain wouldn’t let him sleep until he knew who was behind the voice)_ is making his hands shake. 

Richie sings a lyric filled with so much desperation and yearning that Eddie bites his lip so hard, the metallic tang of blood fills his mouth, he forces himself to pause the song and find one that doesn’t make his eyes burn immediately.

The other problem, Eddie finds, pretty quickly, is that there is basically no songs on either of thei three albums that don’t make him feel like there’s a fucking gaping hole in the middle of his chest. 

He doesn’t get it, any of it. If Eddie takes a step back and exams it logically, the same way he an Maria pick apart their Organic Chemistry homework, he knows logically that there are plenty of songs out there that sound exactly like the ones that Richie is singing.

_No there isn’t_, his brain supplies uselessly. 

There’s something about the songs though, all of them apparently, that makes Eddie feel like he’s a kid again. Stuck in his room, his mom yelling at him from downstairs about taking medicine for one thing or the other, begging for someone to take him away from all of it.

One day Eddie squeezes his eyes shut as he’s listening to a song, trying to focus on anything other than the way his heart feels like it’s ripping in half , and his brain immediately supplies him with a imagine (memory?) of an open window in his childhood bedroom, a boy with big hair and too long limbs falling through it with a loud thud and a bright laugh. 

Eddie has to skip class when he gets that particular imagine stuck in his head. 

Maybe it’s the way Richie sings the songs, Eddie thinks as he’s listening to one of the more tamer songs on his way to meet Maria and her roommate for lunch, clearing his throat every five seconds because he still feels like a rock has been shoved down his throat, no matter how much more tamer he thinks the song is. 

Or maybe it’s the way Richie sings the songs and also the fact that the lyrics are what they are, and also just everything about the situation makes Eddie feel like he’s drowning and he’s grasping at nothing, trying to pull himself up every time he listens to Richie sing.

He tried to stop it, told himself to listen to _Taylor Swift_ or _The Smith’s_, literally anything else, while he’s doing his homework or walking to class, but he feels like he’s out of his damn mind every time he ends up clicking on the playlist he made filled with his favorite songs. 

Maybe he shouldn’t say favorite because they all make him feel like he’s actually on the brink of dying.

“I told you.” Maria says after she sneaks up behind him, yanking an earbud out and holding it up to her ear, smirking as she hears the familiar vocals.

“I’m going insane. Tell me i’m going insane.” Eddie gets out in one big breath, ripping he other earbud and letting Richie’s voice drift in the space between him and Maria.

“Whoa there little one,” Eddie shoves her because she knows he hates that fucking nickname, “I didn’t realize you were this obsessed Eddie.” 

And if that wasn’t an understatement of the century.

Macy and Clark, from his Art History class think that that maybe he finds something he relates to within the songs, with Richie even. Macy puts an emphasis on the last part with a wink, as if Eddie is some sort of fangirl and not some deranged man being driven to insanity because he can’t stop crying at some love songs.

He’s avoided looking at any photos of the band, especially of Richie. He feels like it’ll make things worse, he doesn’t know why, but he knows deep within his heart that it would knock something loose within him. 

It takes three weeks of Eddie crying underneath the blankets of his bed, swearing his heart is being swallowed up, before things get weirder.

It happens when Eddie accidentally falls asleep listening to Richie’s sweet voice singing about the spaces between a boys fingers, and hammocks that held secrets for them in the dead of night, and Eddie dreams.

He dreams about a boy, he thinks it’s the same boy that his brain provided him with all those weeks ago, the big hair and the long limbs are on full display for Eddie, as the boy sits cross cross in front of him, guitar in his hands. Eddies notices that they’re in his childhood bedroom again, sitting on his bed.

_“You can’t make fun of me Eds. A cute boy like you laughing at my singing would kill my ego to negative one.”_ The boy in front of him messes with the tips of Eddie’s fingers, looking beyond nervous, hidden behind a soft smile.

_Cute_, Eddie thinks. 

_“Maybe you need your ego brought down a few notches,”_ Eddie hears himself say, _“Just sing, it’s just me. You trust me, right?”_

Eddie watches in silent fascination as the boy nods and flushes all the way down to his neck. Eddie doesn’t know what’s happening, he knows it’s a dream, but he feels like he’s about to implode either way, feels like this is important and he should be paying attention instead of worrying about having a fucking heart attack.

And then the boy is strumming his guitar softly, and his lips look so soft and he’s flushed and this is a dream but Eddie wants to reach out and touch and see if the boy is as warm as he looks.

Eddie realizes a beat later that the voice coming out of the boys mouth is _Richie’s voice_ , and Eddie would laugh if he didn’t feel like someone just knocked his chest in with a hammer. He would laugh himself silly if things didn't feel like they were finally making sense, like things were fucking finally clicking together. His brain feels like it’s melting, like he can’t catch his breath no matter how many breaths he takes. His chest contracting painfully every time the boy in front of him sings another lyric.

_“R-Richie?”_ Eddie hears himself ask, he can hear the tremble in voice and he doesn’t even have a moment to think about how he knows this definitely isn’t how dreams are supposed to work, before the boy is looking up at him through long lashes.

_“Yeah, Eds? Eddie what’s wrong?,” _The boy, Richie for fucks sake, sets the guitar on the floor, leaning over to take Eddie’s face in his hands. 

_“What the fuck is going on?”_ Eddie feels like his throat is closing up, he reaches up to grip Richie’s hands that are gentle on his face, and he squeaks when he realizes that he can actually feel them, not in a vague way, but he can feel the warmth radiating from him, feel how soft his hands are, how bony his wrist and fingers feel.

_“Eddie? Come on Eddie don’t leave me. Don’t leave yet.”_ Richie looks panicked now and Eddie hears a distant noise in the back of his mind, the Richie in front of him is starting to look out of focus.

_“Time to wake up, Eddie.”_

Eddie jolts awake and he’s in his dorm room again, his fingers twisted tightly in his bed sheets, he can feel beads of sweat running down his face, and knows that those are tears he feels going into his mouth. His roommate is luckily no where to be found, and Eddie can feel a migraine start forming behind his eyelids. 

He’s breathing so hard, trying to catch his breath that he almost misses the fact that his speaker is still playing music softly, Richie’s voice filling the silence of the room.

_“Its time to wake up, and that’s when you’re gone. Next time won’t you stay?”_

This time, Eddie does vomit.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you guys liked it, even a little! You can find me @sventeens on tumblr if you want to yodel about Reddie. 
> 
> Also, if anyone cares, some songs I listened to on repeat while writing this and pretending were the songs Richie wrote:
> 
> -There Is a Light That Never Goes Out- The Smiths  
-From Me, The Moon-LAV  
-The Long And Winding Road- The Beatles  
-Eventually- Tame Impala  
-It's Ok- Tom Rosenthal  
-Angela- Flower Face  
-You- Keaton Henson  
-LITERALLY ANYTHING BY CIGARETTES AFTER SEX


End file.
